Development of a Rideable Inverted Pendulum with Wheels as Teaching Material

Abstract

In the process of stabilizing the inverted pendulum, we adjusted the value of the feedback gain to minimize the scale of the swing and displacement. However, using a smaller model, we focused specifically on the effect of maintaining the inverted state instead of the scale of the swing and the stabilization process. As a result, in lessons using the smaller model, most students' attention was not drawn to the problem of the swing during stabilization. We therefore concluded that further lessons were needed to teach students the importance of minimization through the use of a rideable inverted pendulum in conjunction with the smaller model. In our study, we developed a rideable inverted pendulum as a teaching material in addition to the smaller model and used it to teach a lesson to students at an industrial high school. In the lesson, we researched the students' impressions of learning about feedback control through physical sensations. As a result, our lesson helped the students to learn about feedback systems and control theory and experience the scale of the swing during stabilization with the rideable inverted pendulum. Moreover, we found that our lesson demonstrated the potential for students to think about the mechanism of feedback systems in the context of safety design.